The childhood act of a parent stroking an injured spot while saying "a mother's hand is a healing hand" turned out to be more than mere comfort. A Japanese research team has confirmed that certain touch nerves in the skin play a role in suppressing pain transmission, providing scientific support for a pain-relief principle long known through experience.
According to the Yomiuri Shimbun and other outlets on the 19th, a research team led by Professor Makoto Tsuda (neuropharmacology) at Kyushu University analyzed the neural transmission process between touch and pain through animal experiments and confirmed a phenomenon in which pain signals weaken when certain touch nerves are activated. The findings are set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The skin of our bodies is distributed with various sensory nerves that detect external stimuli, and the signals they receive are transmitted to the brain via the spinal cord. The behavior of instinctively rubbing or stroking an injured area has long been known, but the exact principle by which pain is reduced during this process had not been clearly identified.
Activating Touch Nerves Sharply Cuts Pain Response, Raising Hopes for New Treatment
The research team stimulated the pain nerves in the paws of laboratory mice and observed their behavioral changes. As a result, when they blocked the function of certain touch nerves that transmit contact information, the time the mice spent licking their paws due to pain became about three times longer than before.
Conversely, when the same touch nerves were artificially activated, the pain response decreased to less than half. The researchers analyzed that touch signals play a role in suppressing the transmission of pain signals in the spinal cord.
The team plans to conduct additional research to determine whether the touch nerves confirmed this time also exist in the same way in humans. If technology to activate these nerves using electrical stimulation or vibration is developed in the future, it could lead to a new treatment method to reduce pain in various medical settings, such as injuries, injections, and rehabilitation therapy.
"Finding a way to more effectively activate the function of touch nerves is the task ahead," Tsuda said. "We plan to continue reviewing the possibility of clinical application in the future."
